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The Verizon Droid will be getting all sorts of new toys when it gets upgraded to Android 2.2 next week: Flash! Improved performance! A shiny, faster new camera!

One thing it won’t be getting, however, is support for Android’s WiFi Hotspot feature — you know, the one that lets a handful of devices connect to the web through your phone?

Why? The handset’s internals just can’t support it, unfortunately. In an e-mail to our buddies over at Phonescoop, Verizon rep Brenda Raney says:

The Droid by Motorola doesn’t have [the] hardware to support a Mobile Hotspot. With tethering there is no Connection on the PC side that will allow you to tether the device so the answer is that option isn’t part of this update.

Ah, well — while the news is a bummer, we can’t really fault Verizon or Motorola here. The hardware just isn’t there, and no software sorcery can fix that. You can’t make chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips, you know?

Update: Unless you find the chocolate chips in a hidden drawer. As a few commenters have pointed out, WiFi tethering works just fine.. on rooted (read: hacked) devices. In other words, the hardware seems to be fully capable. We’re looking into it.